


russian roulette

by jisungtheworld (winwinnie)



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reality Show, Angst, Gun Violence, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Just violence in general, M/M, Minor Character Death, Sharing a Bed, Strangers to Lovers, Temporary Character Death, i cannot emphasise that enough, if the hunger games and SAO had a reincarnating baby, it would be this fic, they come back to life!! it's all good!!, whew this is a sad one
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:42:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24492955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winwinnie/pseuds/jisungtheworld
Summary: The city is strange. The rules are stranger. Every move is televised and every second is monitored. Even death has been defeated, turned into a sick game of chance that isn’t always worth the risk.Eight boys travel the wasteland, searching for a way out.(Minho wakes up with a barcode tattoo burnt into his arm, and knows nothing will ever be the same again. Jisung has been playing the same game of russian roulette for far too long.)
Relationships: Han Jisung | Han/Lee Minho | Lee Know
Comments: 13
Kudos: 43





	1. -

**Author's Note:**

> this is certainly... different to what i normally write
> 
> please read the tags carefully.

_“He won't remember, right?"_

_There's a small pinch on the crook of his left arm. It's not quite enough to bring pain - no, his mind is much too fuzzy for that - but he would be lying if he said it wasn't uncomfortable. Somewhere through the haze of cotton wool, he flinches._

_His body doesn’t respond._

_“Of course not,” says a different voice. This one is much cooler, much more heartless. The very sound of it sends chills down his spine. It’s experienced in whatever they’re doing to him, and completely cold-blooded. “Don’t be so ridiculous. I know you’re new here, but I’d have expected you to do at least some research.”_

_The cotton wool grows a little sweeter. The pinch in his arm tugs a little, and he wishes he could just lean over and pull it off. But for some reason, his body doesn’t want to respond._

_Everything is a little too bright, a little too loud, a little too out of focus for him to really work out what’s happening._

_“Sorry,” says the first voice. It gets further away, and then closer again. He tries to shift again. The pinch is becoming ever so slightly more painful with every passing second. The fuzz in his mind is beginning to get weaker. A few forgotten questions begin to come back, but he can’t quite work out where to begin. It’s all too much._

_“Is it ready?”_

_“The first insertion was successful,” says a new voice - really, how many people does he need surrounding him? “Vitals are holding steady. The last stage should be good to go.”_

_“Thank you.” The cold voice again. There’s movement above him, but he can’t see through the blinding, blinding light. Something pushes past the fog. There are cold fingers on his arm, right below the pinch, but he can only feel the pressure. The actual skin there is completely numb. Just like the emptiness in his mind, there’s nothing left._

_Everything is fuzzy. The world is wrapped up in cotton wool, floating high amongst the clouds. It’s like he’s seeing through frosted windows, or the faintest imprint of fingertips on glass._

_And yet, there's something wrong. The pinch is more than a pinch. It’s a tug, spreading fire through his veins, and the apprehension only gets worse with every moment that passes. It’s so white, so blurry and so far away. All he’s left with is that horrible feeling in his gut, and the overwhelming sense of confusion._

_“Preparing the final stage in… Three, two one.”_

_The pinch is no longer a pinch._

_It’s been replaced by something much brighter. If he was unable to see before, now he’s been blinded. The fog is gone, replaced with great swathes of pain, running through his body like liquid fire, pure agony and all he can do is lie there in silence. His body refuses to move. There’s a scream somewhere deep inside his mind, pressing up against the cotton candy walls of his mind, but it’s not enough._

_Below the pinch, on the soft skin of his forearm, the world is burning._

_“Spike in mental activity,” says the third voice. He can barely hear it through the roar of pain, the rush of blood to his ears downing everything else out. “Lucidity is on the rise. I’m increasing the concentration in the IV.”_

_It’s so bright, so loud. Everything is coming back at full force, and even then, there’s nothing to be found except the endless pain. The world is muffled, leaving even the strongest of his emotions hazy and weakened. There’s a final burst of strength in his bones. The pain becomes too intense to handle, the pinch has returned to his arm._

_Minho’s mouth opens. Just the slightest of movements, a silent scream._

_And then the pinch is overwhelming. The clouds return, descending upon him like a great fog, covering every one of his senses in soft, blissful ignorance. It mutes the pain, loosens where his fingers are desperately grabbing onto the last few threads of consciousness._

_The last thought in his mind, before he slips away into the darkness, is that he hopes the first voice was right._

_He hopes he won’t remember._

\---

The ground is cold and hard. When Minho tips his head back, trying to shift into a slightly more comfortable position, he suddenly becomes aware of the concrete beneath his cheek. It’s not comfortable in the slightest. Through the sleep-addled haze in his mind, Minho wonders how he managed to rest in a place like this in the first place.

He’d like to fall back asleep, but that doesn’t seem very likely.

Now that his mind has registered how cold and wet and hard everything is, it’s all he can think about. One of his legs must be in a puddle, as there’s a freezing liquid seeping into the knees of his jeans. With every second that he continues to lie here, the puddle soaks even further into his clothes.

_Let me sleep,_ Minho thinks. He’s so tired. His limbs are heavy, tied down to the ground with lead weights. There’s a pressure pushing down on him, and even his eyelids are threatening to close. _Let me sleep._

But something in his kind urges him to get up. It focuses on the feeling, the cold concrete beneath his cheek and the water in his jeans. There’s a strange humming in his veins. His body protests against the thought, wanting nothing more than to close his eyes again and go back to sleep, but Minho’s on full alert. Every one of his senses is forced to come back to life, and every one of them finds something more a little strange to focus on.

There’s a pain in his left arm. Right underneath the crook of his elbow, something that itches and burns. Waking up doesn’t seem to be helping with the pain. He presses it to the ground beneath him, hoping that the temperature of the surface will help ease the fire. It doesn’t. And Minho can’t quite work out how he’d gotten injured on his arm in the first place.

He doesn’t remember falling asleep. Surely that’s impossible - he _must_ have fallen asleep somewhere to end up here - but he’s now beginning to realise that he doesn’t even know where ‘here’ is. He’s lying in the middle of a street with no idea how he got there.

In fact-

He’s not sure if he remembers anything. That’s enough to force his eyes open. If he’s still been close to drifting off before, the sudden increase in his heartbeat stops that idea in its tracks. The same buzz of adrenaline from before is back, and it's louder than ever. 

There’s a hole in his mind.

Right where his memories should be, there’s simply… nothing. He knows a few things of course: his name, the fact that he loves dancing, the brief image of a cat wrapping itself around his legs. There are more thoughts that come with that, things that don’t need memories. He hasn’t forgotten his personality, or any important skills. He’s sure he can still read and write, just as he knows how to refill his coffee machine and exactly where a cat’s favourite place is to be scratched.

But once he tries to go past the basic information, he’s met with a blank slate. There are no faces when he pictures his parents or his friends. The cat purring against his legs doesn’t have a colour. Besides his name, Minho has no idea who he is.

And more importantly, how he got here.

Before, he’d half managed to convince himself he’d blacked out on the street, too tired to make it all the way home before he collapsed somewhere vaguely safe. Now he’s not so sure. 

The buzz of adrenaline tells him to be on full alert. Every single one of his instincts are standing on edge, waiting for… something. The burning feeling on his arm continues to itch. He’s more and more certain that he hadn’t brought himself here, so the question is: who had? And why? Minho had found it strange that he was so jumpy at first, but maybe it wasn’t such a strange reaction after all.

Slowly, he pushes himself up.

There is a puddle beneath his jeans. It’s large, stretching out right across the - alleyway? - until it reaches a worn brick wall on the other side. The water is cloudy and grey, matching the darkened reflection of the sky above him. There are no stars. They’ve all been replaced with bright neon signs; advertising products and places Minho doesn't recognise. As he watches, the LED bulbs flicker. 

There are more puddles leading out of the alleyway. Minho’s close to a wall, thankfully, tucked up in a corner that’s not visible from the street passing by. Now that he’s more awake, the sounds of the city around him begin to filter in. It’s certainly not busy, but there’s still a decent amount of noise. He’s not sure how he hadn’t noticed it before. 

The same goes to the lights. The haze has fully left his head, and the emptiness in its place is keeping his heart beating at a million miles per minute. They flash and spark, half-broken signs leaning dangerously close to the water around the city’s feet. There’s the smell of something cooking - something hot and cheap.

And strangest of all, when Minho turns away from the forest, looking to the other end of the alley, he’s faced with a forest.

Tall, dark trees. Trunks that are easily twice the size of him, and branches that seem to reach up into the heavens. Only a few metres of woodland are visible, before the lack of coloured neon lights causes the trees to melt into darkness. The cloudy sky above them seems to swirl dangerously. Minho wonders how many of those clouds are just smoke.

The city certainly stinks of it.

He gets to his feet, ignoring the rush of blood to his head. His vision blacks out for a moment. It’s unsurprising, considering how long he must have been lying on the floor, but still manages to catch him off-guard. He has to put his arm out to stop himself from crashing straight back onto the ground. 

His left arm brushes against the wall before he can stop it.

The pain beneath the crook of his arm flares up into agony. Minho winces, almost staggering back from how much the feeling winds him. He scrabbles against the fabric of his shirt, nails digging into his wrist in his haste to stop anything - _anything_ \- from brushing against the irritated patch of skin. It hurts. But he can’t stop, his body is on fire and-

He finally manages to pull his sleeve up. It wasn’t painless, and Minho’s never been gladder that he’s still leaning against the brick wall, but what he sees makes him forget about the hurt.

Right on his forearm, staring back at him in lines as black as the shadows he’s hiding in, is a tattoo.

Not just any tattoo. It’s distinctively a barcode; made up of little black lines, stretching all the way from one side of his arm to the next. There are symbols underneath, even tinier than the lines. Minho can’t tell what they say. He’s not sure whether he wants to.

How had he managed to get tattooed? Even when he concentrates on it, his mind continues to stay blank. His name, the cat, that all comes so easily, and yet whenever he pushes slightly further… He’s met with nothing but more question marks. There’s a hole where the rest of his life should be, and the barcode is like a slap to the face.

It makes him feel ill just thinking about it.

It’s burnt against his skin. A sick feeling deep inside of him tells him this is the kind of mark that never leaves, a branding proving...what, exactly? What’s the tattoo for? What does it mean, and why did it have to be _him_?

Looking at it any longer will make his chest heave with more than air.

He tears his eyes away. The barcode is still there, lingering in the corner of his vision, and he can’t pull the fabric of his sleeve back down fast enough. It hurts. His arm is so sore that even the lightest touch sends agony through his bones, but it’s better than having to look at the mark. With his sleeve down, he can still pretend that he doesn’t know it’s there.

There’s got to be something else to distract him. His thoughts go back to the tattoo every time he stops to breathe, and so the only solution is to push forwards.

Right.

He can do this. He doesn’t know where he is, he barely knows _who_ he is, but he can do this. He has to.

What’s first, then? Getting up? He manages to push himself off the wall with little struggle, ignoring the black spots in his eyes that come from standing up a little too fast.

Finding a way out of the alley? That’s easy enough - he can already see the street from where he’s standing. The neon lights guide him to the cobblestone pavement, and the constant movement of people tells him he’s exactly where he was trying to go. He tries not to think about the fact that no one stopped to help him up, despite the fact he was clearly visible from the street. There are reasons for those kinds of things. Reasons that Minho’s not sure he wants to know. 

Walking forwards? He can do that. He’s already made his way out of the alley. Stepping into the crowd is a little more difficult, especially when the brightness of the lights makes his head pound. It’s too loud, here. Too loud and too busy and too bright, and yet that's exactly what Minho needs. 

While he’s so overwhelmed by the city, he can forget that he’s not supposed to be here in the first place.

It’s only when he’s been walking for at least fifteen minutes, with no direction or aim in mind, that he realises he’s run out of questions to set himself.

What else is there to do, when he’s not even sure who he is?

It’s hard to tell the time, since the clouds cover every inch of the sky with a thick layer of fog. There aren’t any clocks either, and he has a strange feeling that the LED lights burning up the city are never turned off. 

It has to be late. The people around him are all wearing dark clothes, items that are maybe too formal for a morning walk. Evening, maybe, judging by an increasing high number of masks being worn. 

Minho’s head is still spinning, if he’s perfectly honest. He can’t remember what time it had been when he arrived. He can’t remember what time it had been when he’d fallen asleep, and he has no idea how long it took them to brand his arm like cattle. There’s a dip in the temperature, the gas street lights flicker and waver, and he’s still utterly alone.

He should find somewhere to stay.

This isn’t his city. He’s sure of that, by now. Some part of his mind tells him not to lose hope, that he might just be extremely lost in the ‘bad parts’ of town, but it’s nothing more than fitful dreaming. The fog and the cobblestone streets are all too unfamiliar. He’s certain he’s never been here before.

There’s another alley to his right, and he pauses in front of it. His arms are like lead weights and his legs ache. He may have been able to fight off the drowsiness when he’d first woken up, but now the adrenaline has worn off. The tattoo under his elbow still stings. It makes sure his eyes don’t close just yet, but with how heavy his eyelids already feel, he’s not sure how much longer it’ll last.

He has to find somewhere to stay. If he’d woken up with a barcode branded on his arm the last time he passed out, he dreads to think what could happen this time.

It’s just his luck that he never makes it quite that far.

Just as he’s about to push himself off the wall - there’s got to be some kind of hotel around here, right? - the sound of voices catches his attention. They’re coming from down the alley he’s standing next to, and they don’t sound happy. 

Slowly, Minho peers around the wall.

He takes in the scene in a split second. It’s all the time his mind gives him before he starts to feel ill all over again. The bricks he’d just been about to leave become the only thing keeping him grounded, as he tries to process what he’d just seen.

There were at least four men with their backs to the entrance to the alley. Each man had been dressed in heavy black clothes, a strange mixture of leather and cotton that sent Minho’s mind spinning. Their voices were the ones raised. They were shouting at someone - a lone man - was replying in tone equally as angry. 

The whole situation reeks of danger. He’s never been more thankful for his instincts, improved from years and years of dancing. If he’d still been watching them and they’d turned around-

There’s no way it would have ended well for him.

Minho’s heart is in his throat. He can barely hear what the men are saying over the rush of blood to his face, and yet every single sentence manages to echo in his head anyway. 

The brick wall he’s pressed himself up again is sure to leave marks against his back. His barcode tattoo protests with every further movement, every brush of his sleeve against the burning skin. His hands are shaking desperately.

He should do something.

That man is in danger. The men surrounding him; there’s no way he’s getting out of there alive, unless Minho does something. _Anything_. Is he really going to let someone die right in front of him? Is he really going to let someone suffer, let someone be killed for no reason other than malicious fun? 

The buzz of adrenaline screams at him to stay still. Those men- He peers his head around the corner, just for a second, just long enough to confirm what he’d thought he’d seen originally. 

They have guns.

There’s no mistaking the sleek black metal. Minho can’t physically pull himself back around the corner fast enough. He moves like he’s been burnt, pressing his body to wall in a desperate attempt to stay hidden. They have _guns_.

And- they’re not even being careful with them. At least three of the men had the weapons in their hands, someone could round the corner at any moment to catch them. It was almost as if… it was their _right_. That confidence, it couldn’t be faked. Minho hadn’t seen their eyes, but he could already guess what he’d see if he looked into them. 

There would be no fear.

Were they a gang? It’s the only thing that seems to make sense. Minho’s certainly never been to this part of the city before - that is, if he’s even still in the same city. Maybe he’s somewhere that gangs are a lot more common. Is that even possible?

Yet again, his mind wanders back down to the tattoo on his arm. Somehow, he’s finding himself able to believe much more than usual.

The mumble of voices gets his attention, and Minho’s breath catches in his throat all over again. From this far away, he can’t quite work out what they’re saying. It’s dangerous to get too much closer, it’s dangerous to be even this close, and yet he can’t pull himself away. He finds himself stuck in place, drawn by curiosity to the scene that’s unfolding just a few metres away.

“Listen!”

It’s the first word he can actually understand. A risky peek around the wall confirms that the man who’d just spoken is the one that’s pitifully outnumbered. His hands are in the air, a clear sign that he’s surrounding. Minho’s not surprised that the men threatening him don’t look very convinced. They have _guns_. It would be foolish to expect them to have good morals as well.

From the tone of the muffled words, he’s protesting against...something. He’s backing up, slowly, but there’s a brick wall at the end of the alley and nowhere else to run. With each step, they get further and further away.

Minho should run. He shouldn't be here - they have _guns,_ what if he ended up getting shot as well? Why only his legs listen to him and just move? Why’s he still standing here, frozen and drowning in his own foolish curiosity?

The man is still pleading. For his life, Minho thinks. The guns are aimed, drawn at him and ready to shoot at any moment. Even if he’s not looking around the wall, the scene provided by his imagination is more than enough. On the street in front of him, the alley gets the occasional side glance. The men aren’t far enough down that they can’t be seen, and yet no one stops to help.

Not a single person.

They take in the scene, watch the glint of neon light against the guns, and then look back. Continue with their lives as if they hadn’t seen anything. Minho gets a few confused looks, a few pitiful smiles. No one stops to talk. They glance down to his arm - to his _left elbow_ \- and then hurry away.

“Do it, then!”

The shout seems wrong, slightly off in the damp air of the city. If his mouth didn’t taste like metal already, a coppery tang would have made him feel even more ill.

Why isn’t the man fighting? Why did he stop pleading? There’s a note to his voice that Minho doesn’t recognise, something defiant. There are three guns pointed at him. Surely that’s not defiant, it’s _stupid_. He’s basically asking to get a bullet through his head.

The gunshot rings out with perfect timing. 

It makes the world come to a sickening stop. Minho thought he was prepared. Somewhere inside his mind, that morbid curiosity must have known there was nothing he could do, that there was no way the man was leaving the alleyway alive. And yet the sound still manages to make him lightheaded. He’s glad he pressed himself up against the wall. His knees feel like they’re about to give out at any second.

He’s still standing there in shock when the men leave the alley. The guns haven’t even been tucked away; shiny metal looking him right in the eyes. One man even twirls his between his fingers. His teeth, when the black spots in Minho’s vision have cleared enough for him to see again - are the same putrid yellow as the streetlights. 

They almost glisten with spit. Minho can hardly tear his eyes away fast enough.

It takes a moment for his heart to stop pounding. He should have moved when he had the chance, he shouldn’t have been seen here, what if the men had shot him as well? They’d definitely seen him, pressed up so hard against a brick wall. And yet all they’d done was smirk and walk away, despite the fact he’d overheard what had just happened.

Despite the fact that… everyone passing in the street must have seen what happened.

The men weren’t afraid to be seen with guns. They weren’t afraid to be caught shooting an unarmed man. The confidence they gave off stank of self-righteousness, a belonging to the dark depths of the city, and an untouchable immunity.

No one here had stopped, because no one here was surprised.

Bile rises in his throat at the thought, but there are more important things to get to. Like-

The man, lying alone in the alley. Bleeding out, maybe even already bled out - but Minho wouldn’t doubt that those men wanted him to suffer. He might be dying, but there’s got to be time. There’s always time. 

He’s around the wall and in the alleyway before his mind can even protest. The men won’t be returning. They’d been too confident that they’re job was done. And a small voice in Minho’s head says that they’re right.

Still. It doesn’t hurt to try, and as Minho skids to a halt next to the body, it’s the mantra he repeats to himself to try and keep himself sane.

“You’re dying!”

The man frowns. He makes no move to get up, thankfully, but the stare of complete confusion he gives Minho is more than enough. “You would think that, wouldn’t you.”

He doesn’t look very scared. In fact, the man’s face is more at peace than anyone Minho has ever seen before. He isn’t panicking. He isn’t holding the bullet wound, blood spilling over his hands, staining the concrete beneath his body. In fact, he just looks… bored. 

Like this has happened a million times before.

The colour is beginning to drain out of his face. It’s going pale against the shadows of the city. He was wearing a white t-shirt at one point, something nice judging by how easily it’s soaked through crimson. With every breath, the man’s chest stutters. Blood pools on his stomach before dripping down his sides, pooling with ever-growing stain around him.

“Don’t move,” Minho says. His heart is beating so fast. He’s never seen this much blood- _ever_. And he’s never wanted to. Minho’s not the most faint-hearted, he’s enjoyed his fair share of horror movies in his time, but none of that actually compares to the sight in real life. “Don’t make the wound any worse. Stay completely still, put pressure on it, and-”

His _phone_. His phone is gone. Minho’s hands search every one of his pockets, but sure enough, there’s nothing there. Thinking about it, he doesn’t even know if these are his own clothes. He certainly doesn’t recognise them. Had he been robbed? He has more than enough evidence that there are active gangs in this area.

None of that matters. He can’t call for an ambulance.

“Do you have a phone?”

The man doesn’t reply. His face screws up. Despite seeming so bored earlier, the pain must have finally hit. His eyes roll back into his head, and for the first time, he seems to acknowledge that the wound is even there. Trembling fingertips reach over to the bullet hole. Everything is so, so red.

“Don’t touch!” Minho hisses. Before he can realise it, he’s flying across the alleyway, landing on his knees next to the man. The blood pools around his knees, seeping through the already soaked fabric.

It’s still warm.

“Hold on,” he pleads, “You’ve got to hold on. Help- help is coming. I promise.”

There is no help. The lie stains his teeth, creates a foul taste in his mouth. But - he can’t just let this man die. There’s got to be something he can do to help. Anything. He can’t - he _won’t_ \- let someone die in front of him.

And yet nothing comes to mind. Minho’s hands are up against the man’s stomach before he can take another breath. He presses down, hard. That’s what you’re supposed to do, right? That’s how to stop the bleeding for long enough for someone else to get there. They’ll call an ambulance, Minho will watch as he’s taken away, and no one will have died. That’s what's going to happen, right?

Shit.

It’s so warm. Hot, even. The man visibly flinches in pain as Minho’s hands press down. Everything is so red. It coats his hands up to his wrists, stains his jeans. There's so, so much of it, but he’ll be fine. He has to be fine. He _has_ to be.

“Help is coming.” He pleads again, breathless. It’s all happening so fast. “Just- just hold on.”

The man frowns at him again. It’s hard to make out his expression from the blood staining his face. When he speaks, it only flicks more droplets against both of them. His teeth are orange, and Minho’s own mouth mimics the sour taste of copper. “Just how new are you, kid?”

“What?” Minho’s not sure what to reply. He’s covered in blood - they both are - and he doesn’t understand anything. Nothing has made sense since he woke up. All he wants to do is help. “I- I don’t understand. You shouldn’t be talking; it might make the wound worse. Don’t talk.”

The man ignores him. “How long’ve you been here?”

“You’re hurt,” It’s all Minho can think about. The world is so red. And yet, even when the man winces, his face is still mostly expressionless. “Please, you’re hurt. Do you have a phone, anything, we- we need to call for help. You’re _hurt_.”

The man lifts his hands from his wound, waving them dismissively. “There is no help.”

“There’s got to be someone-”

“There’s _no one_.” The man spits his words with such contempt that Minho hardly notices the red flecks that join them. His lips are beginning to stain the same deep scarlet as his shirt. “You foolish boy. You’re new. What do you know?”

“I know that you’re dying,” Minho says, “And if you don’t start co-operating, there’s nothing I can do to help.”

The man laughs. If there had been flecks of blood in his breath before, now he splutters on a crimson spray. “I’m not dying. Don’t you understand? I’m-” He stops. Right in the middle of his sentence, so abruptly that Minho almost thinks he’s gone and died already. 

“What? What is it?”

But the man’s eyes have gone wide. For the first time, he seems to look down and realise what’s actually happening to him. The blood and the pain, it’s like it all comes crashing down at once. Even with Minho’s desperate hands on his chest, they both know he doesn’t have much longer to live. Neither of them have phones to call an ambulance. No one will stop to help.

“Wh-where’s the light?”

“What light?” Minho’s hands are as crimson as the man’s shirt. It’s so warm, much warmer than Minho would have expected, and yet manages to dry under his fingernails almost immediately. Everything is just so red. “Are you delirious?”

The man doesn’t seem to hear him. “This isn’t-” he mumbles, “This isn’t what it normally feels like. Where’s the light?”

He fixed Minho with a look. The horror of his wound seems to have already faded, and the arrogance before seems to have deserted him. There’s something in his expression that’s not quite right, and yet he still seems more at peace than ever before. “What have you done?”

“What?” Minho says, “I haven’t done anything!”

There’s no way he could have done anything, he’s only just arrived in this hell-hole of a city! He’s never met the man before! Maybe the blood loss is getting to him. The spurts from the bullet hole are getting weaker, and the man’s skin is almost as pale as a sheet. He doesn’t have much time left. It's blood loss. It _has_ to be the blood loss.

The man doesn’t reply.

“What did I do?” Minho pleads again. His hands are shaking. “What did I do?”

He almost thinks he’s going to be greeted with silence for a second time. But although the man’s eyes are unfocused, hazy and staring into the distance, he’s still undeniably talking to Minho when he speaks again. His face has contorted with anger.

Every breath is wheezing now, rattling in his chest with a damp, wet sound. The blood from his mouth trickles down his chin and onto his neck, pooling even darker against how pale the man has become. He coughs, once, but it’s more of a choke.

He’s drowning in his own blood.

But he speaks. Right before he coughs one last time, and the unfocused eyes become glassy. Right before the spray showers Minho’s shirt, and the puddle around his knees begins to cool down. Right before he dies, he answers Minho’s question.

“You put on a good show.”


	2. -

The air crackles with electricity. It drowns out the metallic smell of blood for a good few seconds, and then there’s a burst of light - so bright against the gloomy alleyway that Minho can’t even make out what it is. 

He squints, half-frozen in place. The man’s body is rapidly cooling beneath him, the puddle of blood still seeping into the fabric of his jeans. Minho can’t move. He’s stuck in place, stuck in shock, completely overwhelmed.

It takes a moment to his vision to adjust, but it happens eventually. The world fades back into colour. The corners of the alley are just as dark as they were before, his hands are still stained just as crimson, the sky still swirls with the brownish-grey smog.

The letters in front of him, however, are new.

They must have been the source of the light. They’re still sparkling with it, in fact, shimmering in the hazy air and hovering a good few feet above the ground. The font is pretty, long and swooping letters that must have come from a computer. Despite the cursive, they’re undeniably digital. The swirls and dots are identical in each letter. It has an unsettling effect, as if the computer producing the letters was trying to mimic human handwriting. 

Where did they come from? He looks down, hands still not having left the man’s chest. The light hovers directly over the spot - right over the bullet wound itself. When Minho finally comes to his senses, rips his hands away in the horrifying realisation that he’s touching a body, the lettering stays in place. 

There’s no projector. No LED lights that he’s missing, and no glass screen to illuminate the words. They simply hang there, suspended in mid-air. Completely impossible. 

It takes Minho even more time to stop marvelling about where they might have appeared from, and actually read the words.

_ 20,000 credits transferred. _

What? What’s that supposed to mean? Whatever it is, it certainly takes his mind off the corpse in front of him. There’s a good possibility that he’s just in shock but either way, Minho just can’t bring himself to care. The man... he’d been cruel with his words. Maybe Minho could even manage to persuade himself that he deserved it. He hadn’t seemed scared of death, not until the very end. That certainly had to say something about his character. 

What exactly had he said?

Something about putting on a good show.

Confused as Minho might be, he has a pretty good idea of what that could mean. Cameras, right? He glances around the alleyway, but it’s hard to see into the darkest corners of the bricks, even with the glowing letters in front of him. 

Credits for what, exactly?

The word ‘credits’ suggests money. The disappearance of his wallet and phone - even if he can’t see any cameras - that could all be connected. The man had also called him ‘new’. It must have been obvious to him that Minho had no idea what was going on. Which in turn poses the question - _what_ was going on that made it so obvious?

The man stares back at him with glassy eyes. It’s beginning to make Minho feel quite ill.

The letters flicker a few times, now that he’s not looking at them quite so intently, before disappearing as quickly as they had appeared. There’s still no sign of any sort of projector. It’s strange, the timing. Almost as soon as he’d taken his eyes away from them.

He really hopes there aren’t any cameras. 

It gives him a bad feeling. The thought of being watched - they could have helped save that man, but they chose to watch as Minho poured every last inch of his being into trying to stop the bleeding. They watched, and rewarded him with… money? As if that was any sort of exchange for a real, human life.

He can’t stay here anymore.

He stands up with shaky legs. What next? His mind is blank, he’s covered in blood and he can barely remember anything other than his own name. 

What was he even doing? All that his mind can remember is the way the life had bled out of the man, the sound of the gunshot and how warm his blood had felt beneath Minho’s hands. 

His words, still echoing in his mind.

He can’t focus on it. He mustn’t. Minho isn’t foolish enough to spend hours waiting for the trauma to set in, or simply asking the shock to leave him alone. Instead, he forces himself to relive the memory of the men leaving the alley, reminding himself that they could have seen him at any point. They could have worked out he tried to save the man. Minho doesn’t know much about gang culture, but he doesn’t doubt they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot him.

He ends up leaving the alleyway without even glancing behind him.

The man is dead. All that’s left is a body. Minho can’t stop - he’s got to continue on, he’s got to find _something._

The streets seem to stretch on endlessly. He’s not sure of what he’s even looking for, other than he’ll know it when he sees it. The adrenaline that had been keeping him moving is beginning to wear off, and his feet ache.

Everywhere looks the same. The people all wear the same dark clothes, talk in the same hushed voices. The roads are narrow, there are no cars, and every so often he catches another glint of a weapon.

A gun strapped to someone’s thigh, perhaps. A rifle across someone’s back. Even a pistol being waved around freely, the man hardly seeming aware of the devastation the weapon could cause. Minho skitters to the other side of the pavement almost immediately. His hands are heavy, and his heart is even heavier.

He’s about to round the corner into another street, when something catches his eye.

The buildings are all crammed so close together here that he’d missed it the first time around. The lights are all so bright and gaudy that they drown each other out. But now he can see a building, nestled between a fish market and what looks like an office building. The brick walls stretch out further behind the shops, leading out to the border of the forest peeking out from the gaps between the buildings.

A motel.

The letters are huge, flashing neon lights that send glittering shadows across the cobbled floor. They seem bright even compared to the LED lights right next to them, unaffected by the swirling fog. Minho can hardly believe his luck. 

The doors seem professional enough, the area isn’t as shady as the alley he’d woken up in, and there are enough people milling about on the street outside to reassure him. No one looks at him twice, despite the bloodstains on his jeans and shirt. It’s the perfect combination of trustworthy and dubious. 

He crosses the street in just as few steps, and pushes open the entrance before he can persuade himself out of the decision. Even the thought of a bed - a nice hot shower, a soft mattress and warm food in the morning - practically makes him drool. 

Inside the motel is just as he’d expected. 

The lobby is deserted, a few chalkboards propped up against the side displaying out-of-date deals. The carpet is a dark red, stained with several questionable dark liquids, and the whole area smells like old alcohol. There’s a large desk opposite the door. A lady - the receptionist - sits at it, underneath an even larger display board of prices and perks. The writing is irritatingly small, and Minho can’t read it from this distance. 

There’s another motel sign, though. Right at the top of the board, blinking in the familiar way of the LED lights from outside.

It’s strangely reassuring, and gives Minho the confidence to approach the receptionist. 

“How,” now that he’s closer, he can make out the writing on the board. He squints at it. The currency all seems to be in ‘credits’ - the same type he’d received in that alleyway. “How much is it for a night?”

The receptionist narrows her eyes at him. “One night?”

Is that a strange request? Minho glances around him for reassurance, something to tell him that he’s just overthinking again. But now that he thinks about it, the entrance lobby is strangely empty. Even though the sky outside has been dark for hours now, there’s no way it should be this quiet. Going by the amount of people he’d passed in the streets; it wasn’t even that late at night. There should be at least _someone_ else checking in now.

And besides, the place gives him a strange vibe.

The empty room, the expression of the receptionist. They hadn’t even looked at him twice when he’d approached the desk, despite the fact he’s still covered in a dead man’s blood. He can try and tell himself that the blacked-out windows are to stop the blinking of the LED lights, but is that really all?

“One night,” he confirms. Even if that’s not normal, Minho’s not staying here for longer than he has to. 

The receptionist looks at him again. This time, there’s a hint of something else in her eyes. It’s completely unreadable, and gone so quickly that Minho’s almost certain he imagined it in the first place. “Fine,” she says, “That’ll be three credits.”

Three?

_ Three? _

That can’t be right. He’d turned up covered in blood, confused and alone, obviously not from the city, and she’s only charging him three credits? Surely this would be an opportunity to take advantage of him. If he’d stumbled into the motel, they must know he has enough money to cover the bill. She doesn’t seem particularly friendly, either. It’s hard to think that she might be taking pity on him.

“That’s fine,” Minho says, before he can start looking suspicious himself. 

He wonders if it’s the right thing to do when the receptionist looks equally as surprised. Maybe she had been taking pity on him, after all. Or - Minho takes an even closer look at the flickering signs behind her head - maybe he _is_ being charged way too much. 

It leaves an unsettling feeling in his gut.

If three credits are a lot, then how has he ended up with _twenty thousand_ of them?

“You just swipe your code over the counter.”

The sound of her voice breaks Minho out of his thoughts. “Oh, sure,” he says, hurriedly tugging the sleeve of his left arm down to reveal the tattoo. That must be what she was referring too, and as she doesn’t look particularly surprised by the sore red of his skin, it only confirms that he’s new. 

He holds it out awkwardly for a few moments, before she rolls her eyes yet again. She grabs his wrist, pulling him with more force than needed towards the desk. He almost stumbles forward from the shock of it, only managing to catch himself at the last second. When he eventually comes to his senses again, the lady has let him go, and is busy writing something down into her notebook.

He keeps his arm outstretched, not sure what else to do. 

The longer he stands here, the stranger this place seems to become. There isn’t a computer, Minho thinks, frowning. There are LED lights everywhere, holograms that appear from the middle of the street, and yet he hasn’t seen a single computer yet. 

It hardly matters in the scheme of things. He can remember writing emails, using his phone to text people, but he can’t remember who. That empty gap in his mind takes up too much space. There’s no one he can think of to call for help. No one that would even notice he’d gone missing from his old life and ended up somewhere completely different. He can barely even _remember_ his old life. 

There’s the beginning of a realisation, somewhere. About this whole city and the tattoo on his arm. But Minho promptly shoves that thought right to the back of his mind where he can never think about it again. He’s got much more important things to be worrying about.

There’s a beep. His skin prickles, the crook of his elbow heating up. That must be the transaction, he guesses, as the woman nods, satisfied. “You can put your arm away now,” she tells him, and Minho is more than glad to roll his sleeve back down and take a step away from the counter.

“Which room am I?

“Here,” In lieu of an answer, she slides a key across the desk. An actual _key_. It’s heavy in his hands, more like one of the ones he’d see on television than in real life. There’s a paper slip tied to the end with a piece of twine, reading ‘5’. 

He stares at it. 

The hair at the back of his neck stands on edge. His tongue is heavy - _should he say something?_ \- but there’s nothing to be said. His instincts are obviously telling him something, he just has no idea what.

The thought is immediately shoved away, joining that sick realisation from earlier. He can’t afford to be picky right now. He has nowhere else to go, and it had taken him long enough to find this motel in the first place. All he wants to do is lie down, try and wash the blood from his shirt, and cry.

Maybe when he wakes up, this’ll all have been a nightmare. 

“It’s on your left,” says the woman. She’s still writing in the notebook, and so Minho decides not to bother her anymore. He sets off in the direction she’d pointed him in, and tries to ignore the fact that her gaze burns into his back. 

He doesn’t know why she’s watching him. He’s not sure whether he _wants_ to know why she’s watching him. 

It’s incredibly difficult to shake the feeling of being watched off. The corridor to his room is just as empty as the entrance hall, and yet his skin still crawls. There’s no way that the lady from the reception desk can still see him, but…

There.

His room is easy to find, and it distracts him from the increasing volume of his thoughts. He’d been convinced there were cameras back in the alley, hadn’t he? And he’d just been imagining it. Just like he is here, it’s all just in his imagination. 

Room number five is exactly how he expected it. Minho’s seen enough shitty motels to keep his hopes down. There’s a large double bed in the centre of the room, sheets folded just hap-hazardly enough that Minho knows they haven’t been changed recently. The mattress sags depressingly.

There’s a large wardrobe in one corner of the room, but the door hangs from the material at an alarming angle. Apart from a scuffed mirror facing the bed, it’s the only furniture. The only other things of any interest are a single window opposite him, two stained curtains hanging limply on either side, and a door. 

Minho crosses the room at lightning speed. His fingers are crossed - even the shitty motels from his old city had a bathroom, but he doesn’t want to jinx his last hope. The handle turns, thankfully, and-

The bathroom is damp, bare of anything but a toilet and a sink, and the light bulb crackles dismally when he presses the switch. 

But it’s a _bathroom_.

The water is cold, and it washes the stain of blood from his hands. Minho rubs at his skin until it’s red all over again, and even then, there’s a layer of crimson trapped under his nails. His skin crawls at the thought of taking his shirt off - the cameras still watching him, even if they’re just in his imagination - so he settles for splashing water onto his shirt. It doesn’t do much, but the feeling of water against his skin is soothing all the same.

There’s nothing that can be done for his jeans or his shoes. If he’s not willing to take his shirt off, then he’s not exactly going to go stripping down to his boxers. He’ll just have to use the… _credits_ to buy some new clothes tomorrow. 

He leaves the bathroom just as quickly as he’d entered. The room seems just as depressing as before, but all of Minho’s energy has disappeared. It’s as if the water had sapped him of any strength he’d had left. The events of the last hour seem like they happened a year ago, and all Minho wants to do is curl up in a ball and try and forget the world exists. His eyelids are already growing heavy. He’d been so tired when he first woke up, and now that feeling is back in full force. 

The bed is calling to him. It takes all his remaining strength to make it across the dusty carpet, let alone take off his shoes. He falls onto the covers fully-clothed, and even that is an achievement.

He’s so tired.

His tongue is coated in lead, mouth as dry as sandpaper and making even the thought of speaking impossible. The mattress, though lumpy, seems to hold him close, dragging him down into the soft covers and keeping his limbs pinned in place. His eyelids are beginning to close. He can already begin to feel the sleep setting in.

And yet-

His mind _refuses_ to stop spinning. Minho is tired out of his mind, exhausted like he’d never been before, and yet his thoughts won’t stop. Even with his eyes closed, body sinking into the bed, he just can’t fall asleep. His heart is beating too quickly. The hairs at the back of his neck prickle with anticipation.

Something is about to happen.

He’s so tired, but _something_ is about to happen. There’s no telling how long he’s been collapsed onto the bed, but his thoughts scream in chorus, telling him to be prepared, that something is coming. 

Minho’s stomach churns. All he wants to do is fall asleep, and yet… 

It can’t be that bad of an idea, right? He’d only need an hour or so’s rest, then he’d leave the motel immediately. Why should falling asleep be anything bad? How can he be so certain that something is going to happen, when-

“Hey!”

Minho frowns. The sick feeling in his gut gets a little stronger, and his mind jumps at the sound like it was _waiting_ for it. Was this the something his instincts had been warning him about?

His mind is still foggy. His limbs feel like they’ve been coated in cotton wool, but he struggles against the feeling, trying to regain his ability to think. First of all, where is the sound coming from? The walls are thin, sure, but the voice he’d just heard wasn’t muffled at all. It was almost as if someone had been directly talking to him. 

The thoughts of cameras and credits come flooding into his head like a tsunami.

Shit.

Why did he ever think he was safe here? If there were cameras in some dark and abandoned alley, of course they’d also be in a shady motel. Knowing his luck, they were probably even following him, watching his every step in order to torment him just a little more. 

“Hey! Get up!”

But to be coming from a camera, there’d have to be a microphone. The room is empty, that was the first thing Minho had noticed. He might not be very used to this city, but he’s positive that there’s nowhere to hide a microphone in this room. And besides, the voice wasn’t all static-y. It was clear, it wasn’t muffled, and it was becoming more urgent by the second.

Minho sits up.

The hairs on his arms are raised. His heart is beating at a pace that can’t be healthy. Something in his gut is telling him to listen to the voice. It’s the same feeling that had told him not to fall back asleep in the street, that told him to check his arm and notice the tattoo.

“You, with the bloody shirt!” There’s a slightly more muffled huff, “Jeez, you think you’d change your outfit or somethin’, huh.”

Whoever the voice is, Minho’s willing to bet that he wasn’t supposed to hear that last part. He glances at himself self-consciously in the mirror. The stain is huge, more than just blood on his shirt. It covers the knees of his trousers as well, and despite his frantic scrubbing in the ensuite earlier, there’s still a dark crust beneath his nails. 

He frowns. The room is empty. He’d left the bathroom door ajar, and there hasn’t been any movement inside since he entered the motel room in the first place. 

So where-

“Listen! Hey! You know I’m talkin’ to you, so hurry your ass up!”

From this position, Minho can tell the angle of the voice. Glad he hadn’t even considered taking his shoes off, he makes his way over to the window. His heart is hammering in his chest. It’s so powerful that his whole body seems to shake with it, and he’s almost surprised that the wall he’s pressing himself up against isn't trembling to the same rhythm. 

The voice isn’t coming from inside his room after all.

Minho peers around the glass, using the curtain to hide his face from whoever was speaking to him. The top panel of the window is slightly open - that’s how he’d heard their voice so clearly - and through the thin fabric of the curtain, Minho narrows his eyes.

There’s-

The person who’d been talking to him is a few metres away from his room. For the first time, Minho realises he’s actually taking in his surroundings. He’d been too caught up with the bathroom and the _confusion_ of it all before, and now the sight takes his breath away. 

He’s on the ground floor, but there’s still a slight uphill to the building, leaving him looking down. The window looks over the forest he’d been able to see from the alleyway. Dark trees, huddled close together and free from the blinking neon lights of the city. Thick tendrils of fog wrap around the trunks, the branches of the tallest trees disappear into the thick haze above. The grass is patchy and brown at best. Again, Minho finds himself thinking just how strange this city seems to be. Even the grass seems to have been bled dry of any natural colour.

Most curiously of all, is the boy.

He’s staring into Minho’s window with such a determination that he just has to have been the one to call out earlier. From this distance, and through the murky fabric, it’s hard to tell much else out. He’s got dark hair. He’s standing at the very border of the forest, as if he’s afraid to take another step forward. 

He can’t see him any more, Minho realises. The bed must only just be visible from his angle, and now that Minho’s no longer laying down, his line of sight has become useless. There’s certainly a frown on the boy’s face. 

“What do you want?”

The sudden burst of confrontation takes even Minho by surprise. He almost stumbles back, in awe with his own daring. The boy’s head whips around, eyes borrowing on the scrap of curtain visible from where he’s standing. The shadows from the trees may hide most of his features well enough, but his expressions are blindingly obvious. 

“Are you-” he shouts, which takes most of the impact of his words away, “hidin’? You’re not a little kid, you bleedin’ idiot!”

Minho raises his eyebrows. Wow. It’s certainly an interesting choice of language.

“What do you want from me?” He calls out again. “Why are you watching me?”

This only seems to frustrate the boy even more. He throws up his hands into the air, lets out a laugh filled with scorn, and steps forward. It’s not an action he’d particularly been wanting to take, judging by the way he glances self-consciously behind him, but he does it to get closer to Minho anyway.

“Listen,” he says. They’re now close enough that he doesn’t need to shout. Minho realises with a slight shock that he’s no longer hidden behind the curtain. The boy can see him as clearly as he can see the boy. “I know you’re not stupid. Or maybe you are, and you’ve just got this far on dumb luck - but either way, you need to leave. Now.”

He’s got an accent. It’s strong, hauntingly familiar, and yet Minho still feels like he’s never heard it before. The man that had been shot - the man Minho had watched _die_ \- he’d had a hint of this accent too. 

“What? Why?”

The boy rolls his eyes. “Maybe you are an idiot, then. Don’t tell me you actually trusted those idiots at the front desk, did ya?”

“So what if I did? What’s it got to do with you?”

What’s any of this got to do? For all Minho knows, this boy could be working with the men with the guns. They might have seen him run into the alleyway after all, and now they could be hunting him down. Luring out of safety before shooting him stone cold dead. 

“Do you want to die?”

The way the boy asks the question is so plain, so serious compared to his usual lilting words, that Minho gets goosebumps. The feeling in the pit of his stomach from when the boy had first called out hasn’t disappeared. If anything, it’s only grown stronger. 

“Of course not,” says Minho. The man from the alleyway still hasn’t left his mind. Every time Minho thinks he might have forgotten the look of those empty eyes, he can see them staring right back at him. Blaming him for something he still doesn’t know. 

He doesn’t want to end up like that.

He refuses.

“Then climb outta that window and hurry up!” When Minho’s only response is silence, the boy must realise he needs to explain a little more. “You’re a right newbie, aren’t you? Please don’t tell me you’re _actually_ stupid enough to think this is a real motel?”

Minho pauses at that. “You mean it _isn’t_ a real motel?”

The boy seems speechless. He gapes at Minho for a few seconds, mouth opening and closing like a rather confused fish. Eventually, he seems to come back to his senses. “You’re an idiot. An actual idiot. I don’t believe it.”

“I’m serious!” There’s no point trying to hide, at this point. The boy can see Minho just as well as Minho can see him. In the urgency of the conversation, he pushes the window open and leans against the sill dangerously, too caught up in the conversation to even realise his actions. “I mean- I thought it was a bit suspicious, but…”

His voice trails off. He’s just realised something awfully convenient. “You’re telling me not to trust the motel, right? But why should I be trusting you?”

He expects the boy to be annoyed. He’d already seemed like he was about to turn and walk away, and Minho is almost certain that the audacity of his question will just offend him. For all the language and the insults, the boy seems like he’d get offended awfully easily. 

He is not expecting the boy to grin.

“That’s more like it,” he says. Now that they’re closer, Minho can see the way his cheeks puff out, the way his eyes sparkle now that he’s not hidden in the shadows of the tree. It’s the opposite of the lady at the reception desk. She’d been robotic and cold, despite her bland tone. The boy is rude and mean, and somehow utterly charming.

Without meaning to, Minho realises that he’s climbing out of the window to join him.

He stops, his legs halfway swung over the sill. There’s a grassy verge beneath him, only a couple of feet down. It wouldn’t be a painful fall at all. And from there, the woods - _and the boy_ \- are only a few metres away. 

What is he doing?

Is he so stupid, that he’s going to follow the first cute boy he sees into the forest? For all he knows, he could be working for the men from the alleyway. Minho could be the safest he’ll ever be in this motel. He’d seen how quickly they were to shoot. He doubts they’d even give him a second glance for pitiful mercy. 

“I don’t trust you,” he says, more to himself than anything.

The boy’s grin grows even wider. “That’s the best idea you’ve had so far.” For a second, however, his eyes slip behind Minho. They glance into the room behind him, and the grin falls off his face so quickly it’s as if it were never there in the first place. “Now, hurry on up! Get your ass over that window, _quickly_.”

“Why?” Minho asks. His heart is thundering in his chest. It hasn’t stopped beating since the boy first spoke, and every passing second causes another spike of adrenaline to burn through his body. His mind is in fight or flight at full swing, but he’s so confused that he _still_ has no idea what he’s supposed to do. “Give me one good reason.”

“I already have,” says the boy, “You feel it, don’t ya? Listen to your instincts.” 

His instincts?

The adrenaline. The hairs crawling at the back of his neck, and the constant compulsion to look for cameras. He’d felt like they were watching him. He hadn’t trusted the lady at the desk. His mind hadn’t let him sleep for even a _minute_.

And yet, he’d answered back to the boy in front of him without a second thought. Even without realising, he’d relaxed and let his guard down. 

_ Listen to his instincts. _

Stop thinking too hard, and just _move_. Keep moving until you’re sure you’re safe, and even then, never fully rest for even a second. He wants to believe that he’s safe here. The bed would be so comfortable, the working tap and the toilet have got to be so much better than whatever is in the forest.

He has nothing to prove that going with the boy would be better than staying in the motel. He has nothing to trust, except the very words of someone who seemed _proud_ of being called untrustworthy. 

Minho’s never been this confused in his life.

He’s tired. He’s fed up, he’s covered in blood, and his shirt is still damp from the water he’d splashed on it earlier. There’s a tattoo of a barcode on his arm. He can barely even remember who he is.

He just wants to go home.

Somewhere in the blur of thoughts, between holding onto the window and just giving up, his other leg swings over the sill. His mind screams at him to move, and before he even realises, he’s falling. Tumbling down from the ledge and onto the grass beneath him. 

He hits the ground harder than he expected. His limbs are limp, mind working on auto-pilot to simply get as far from the room as possible. The slope catches him just in the right position, and he rolls down, head over heels. He’s winded by the impact, but somehow the pain barely seems to matter.

It’s only when he stops moving that he realises what’s just happened.

“Come on!” Someone takes his hand, dragging him to his feet and pulling him towards the shadows of the forest. Minho’s head throbs, his heart is beating at twice the normal speed. When the world finally stops spinning, he can see it’s the boy that’s taken his hand. They limp at an agonisingly slow pace. “Come-”

The end of his words are cut off as the motel room behind them erupts into flames


	3. -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the original plan to this fic was making me too sad, so i decided we're going off track now.

There’s a rush of air so hot that the world fades away for a second. Even from this distance, Minho is nearly knocked over by the rush. The back of his neck sears, his feet trip and stumble, and the pulsing in his head gets even stronger. The boy holding him up doesn’t fumble once. His arms are strong from where they’re wrapped around Minho’s waist. If he hadn’t been supporting Minho, he would have hit the ground some time ago.

And then again…

Minho can’t resist the urge to look behind him.

The room is gone. Flames roar from inside the window, crackling with a volume that hardly seems possible. Something at the back of Minho’s mind shivers, telling him that there’s no way the motel could have burnt up that spontaneously. There’s no way the flames would be this high and hungry already. There’s no way that Minho wouldn’t have noticed the fire beginning to spread when he’d still been inside.

The stench of smoke is acrid, hitting the back of his throat and drying his mouth. Or maybe that’s just from the realisation that without the boy, he’d be dead.

That’s certainly a strange thought.

Luckily, it’s not one he has the luxury to contemplate. The boy’s hands are firm where he’s propping Minho up. They’re warmer than he expected, although that could just be the heat from the fire behind them, and squeeze almost painfully into Minho’s skin. There’s an unmistakable urgency about his movements.

“That,” Minho says, once his head has straightened up enough for works to come out in (what he hopes is) the correct order, “ _ What  _ was that?”

The boy side-eyes him. They’re heading further into the forest now, and the light from the inferno is slowly beginning to die away. The trees are clumped together. It’s dark, and the starless sky above them does little to help that fact. “Whaddya think?”

What  _ does _ he think? A murder attempt, most probably. Someone was probably trying to murder whoever was in that motel, and Minho just happened to be caught up in the crossfire. It’s not an unreasonable conclusion, considering how rampant crime seems to be in this city.

But the motel had been empty, apart from him.

And since Minho’s trying his hardest to keep to the most logical chain of events, that means…

“They tried to kill me.”

The boy nods. “Maybe you’re not as stupid as you look, idiot boy.”

Minho frowns. The combination of ‘not stupid’ and ‘idiot boy’ doesn’t sound quite right to his ears, but he’s quickly learning a lot about the other’s strange speech habits. And rather than accidentally offend his…  _ saviour?,  _ he’d quite like to have a few questions answered first.

“Who are you?”

The boy’s eyebrows rise so high they almost disappear into his hairline. “Is that a question you really want to be asking me?”

“Why would those people - the motel staff - why would they want to kill me?”

“Again,” the boy rolls his eyes at this point, right in clear view of Minho. He doesn’t seem to care that he must have been seen. He doesn’t seem to care about much, thinking about it. “Isn’t that something that  _ you  _ should know? I’m not the one that wandered my ass into a killer motel, so why are you askin’ me?”

He’s right, to a point. There’s no reason why the boy should know the motives of the motel staff, it’s not like he’s part of them or anything. And he’s barely even interacted with Minho for more than five minutes.

Yet, he’s been in this city for a while, judging by the accent. He’s pulling Minho into the trees like he knows every square inch of the forest. And even if Minho logically should be scared (after witnessing a man bleed out in front of him  _ and  _ an almost-sucessful attempt on his life, it makes sense that he would be slightly more cautious) he’s not.

And so he isn’t afraid to fire right back at the boy.

“Well, judging by the fact that you were stood  _ right outside of my window,  _ that’s quite a coincidence. Especially since - oh, I don’t know - you knew they were planning to kill me.”

The boy doesn’t reply. Instead, he purses his lips and continues to look straight ahead.

“ _ Answer me. _ ”

It does the job well enough. The boy’s hands tighten around his waist, but he starts talking. “No one enters that motel ‘less they’re stupid. If you’re from around here, you’d know that thing’s a death trap. Prayin’ off people that don’t know any better.”

Minho waits for him to continue, but there doesn’t seem to be anything else the boy wants to say. It doesn’t mean Minho is satisfied, though. “And? I doubt that you decided to rescue me from just the goodness of your heart.”

The boy chuckles. It’s humourless and dry, somewhere within the sound is at least a little amusement. “I’m that easy to read, huh?” 

He slows down. They’re far enough from the inferno that the flickering light of the flames has completely disappeared. The woods have swallowed them up, since the path the boy has led them down is frenzied enough that no one would be able to follow them. The only remaining sign that there was ever a fire is the scent of smoke lingering in the air.

“You’ve got credits.”

“What?” It’s so out of the blue that Minho’s mind takes a moment to catch up. Credits… that’s the currency here, he’s pretty sure. It makes sense that this would all come down to money. Maybe this city isn’t so different from his own home after all. 

“The credits? You ain’t no scammer, you definitely paid for that room. And you’re new. They’re playin’ games with you, what with all that money, and gettin’ blown up on your first night is one hell of a show.”

A show?

The phrase is hauntingly familiar. Something about the contempt the boy had placed on the words seems to make sense, seems just as natural as the words themselves. 

_ You put on a good show. _

That’s what the man had told him, right before he died. He’d looked right into Minho’s eyes and told him that he’d put on a good show, as if that’s the very reason why he had to die. As if he hadn’t been shot in the first place. Like it was solely Minho’s fault that he was bleeding out in a back alley. 

“What does that mean, ‘ _ a show _ ’?”

The boy looks at him, hard. His eyes seem to drink in every inch of Minho’s being, as if weighing up the options of a question Minho didn’t even realise he asked. “How many credits?”

“Pardon?”

“How many credits do you have?”

Minho’s mind is blank. With all that’s happened, he can barely even remember anything that isn’t immediately stained in blood or covered in a thick layer of ash. Is that all the boy cares about? Money? He splutters around an answer, “I don’t know - how am I supposed to remember? It hasn’t exactly been the most uneventful day.”

“It’s night,” says the boy. He then grabs Minho’s forearm, pulling his hand up until his wrist is facing the starless sky. Before Minho can even think of tugging his arm away, the boy has swiped his fingers over the skin there. They’re softer than he would have expected. His touch isn’t rough either, as Minho could barely even feel the graze of skin-to-skin contact. 

Somehow, the touch wipes any thoughts of protesting from his mind. 

“Look,” the boy says, taking his fingers from Minho’s skin. As he does so, a light fills the forest around them. A projection. It’s the same as the one Minho had seen back in the alleyway, displaying how many credits he’d had, and it completes the same job here. Blazing bright numbers in a familiar total. 

“How did you manage to do that?”

The boy only squints at him in response. “As if I’m gonna tell you that.” All his words have lost their bite, however. Try as he might to glare at Minho, his eyes keep getting drawn back to the glowing numbers projected in the air between them. They reflect on his pupils, and Minho doesn’t miss the way that the boy’s mouth has dropped slightly.

“What?” He asks, somewhat confused, “What is it?”

If the boy hears him, he certainly doesn’t act like it. Minho might not as well be there, for all the attention that’s being paid to him. If it weren’t for the bright string on numbers, he’s got half a mind to think that the boy would have abandoned him in the woods already. 

“They’ve gotta be kiddin’” says the boy. He looks back up to Minho, and maybe for the first time, it’s like they’re actually seeing each other.

In a strange way, the boy is cute. There’s a contrast between the hard sounds of his accent that doesn’t fit with the squirrel-like look of his cheeks. His eyes, now that Minho can actually see them, are almost too big for his face. Now that he’s stopped throwing insults for a few seconds, he could be an entirely different person.

In a different world, he might have been someone Minho would want to know.

Although, if he thinks about it, he’s getting to know him now. He doesn’t exactly have a choice, granted, and the circumstances are less than ideal, but they’ve been talking for a good few minutes and the boy doesn’t seem to be getting bored. That may or may not be something to with the credits on his wrist, but Minho is trying not to think about that.

If he looks closer, he starts to notice things about the boy that make even less sense. His skin is hard to see in the dark of the forest, but the patches of light every so often reveal how grimy he is. The temperature outside is cool - even cooler now that they’ve strayed away from the gaslit city - but the boy is dressed in a thick winter jacket. The fur of the hood is just as stained as his skin. Nestled within the fabric is a pair of what looks like… well, Minho can only describe them as ski goggles, even though that’s not quite right.

With every moment that passes, it becomes more obvious that the boy is as much of an outsider as Minho.

He may have the accent of the city, and he may know his way around a booby-trapped motel, but he doesn’t fit in. 

“What are credits?” Minho asks, when they’ve been standing there for a while. The boy hasn’t said anything since, instead blinking and wiping at his eyes. Almost in disbelief. “Can you- I mean, do you want to show me  _ your _ arm?”

That gets a reaction. The boy looks up and scoffs. “You’re joking, right?” 

Minho isn’t kidding. He’s not even sure which of the questions the boy is referring to. They’d seemed sensible in his head, but now that he’s said them out loud, it’s a different story. Mutely, he shakes his head.

“You really are an idiot,” says the boy. He swipes his hand through the hologram and it disappears, leaving no traces that it was ever there in the first place. “The credits - you  _ must _ at least know that much - they’re this hellhole’s version of money.”

“I did know that,” Minho confirms.

He’s not sure if it was the right thing to do, because the boy only rolls his eyes. “Well that’s good, because I literally told ya about three minutes ago. I was  _ gettin’ _ to the next part. If you’d waited for one bleedin’ second, I was just about to tell you that one credit is worth a lot. Like - a  _ lot _ , a lot.”

Minho gulps. “How much is.. a  _ lot _ ?”

For the first time that they’ve known each other, the boy smiles. It’s almost wolfish in nature, and it makes Minho feel like he’s just walked into the middle of an ambush. “More than you’re thinkin’ of.”

He wasn’t thinking of anything, Minho wants to protest. How can that be possible? If the boy really means what he’s saying, then Minho is basically a millionaire. Maybe even more than a millionaire, going by the hungry look on the boy’s face. 

Shit, jus _ t imagine _ what he could do with that kind of money.

He’d been so happy to settle down in that crappy motel room for the night, now he realises that he’d been dreaming small. That warm meal, the working shower - they didn’t have to be just pipe dreams! He could get out of these bloody clothes, finally allow himself to relax. He might even be able to find a way out of the city. Money always made people talk, right?

“Oh, you’re dreamin’ grand now,” the boy says, looking Minho up and down. He’s lost the wolfish look now, but that air of superiority remains. It hangs around his shoulders like a cape, and Minho gets the distinct feeling that he’s being laughed at. “Look at ya. You’re rich, buddy, and it took five bleedin’ seconds to get to your head.”

He’s angling at something, Minho can tell. Poking and prodding around, trying to get something from him. 

“What-” says the boy, with much more deliberation this time, “-did you do to get played like this?”

_ There’s a man, lying in front of him. The bullet wound in his stomach drenches the cobblestones around them. His hands are warm and wet, pressing further and further down, but it does nothing to stop the bleeding. The same arrogance draining out, the sick realisation of an inevitable death. _

_ The scorn, nothing more than pure hatred in his words. _

_ ‘You put on a good show’. _

Minho’s breath catches in his throat. He stumbles forwards - or maybe he’d already been falling - and only just manages to catch himself before he collides with the boy. There’s blood on his hands. It may have been hidden by the darkness of the forest, but there’s blood on his hands.

He can still feel it beneath his fingernails.

It’s a stain that doesn’t come out so easily, and Minho can’t quite stomach the fact that he’d  _ forgotten _ .

There’s still the taste of bile in his throat when he realises that the boy is still waiting for an answer. He’s taken a step back from where Minho had tripped, keeping a carefully calculated distance between them. It’s stupid, really, since that rule had been nowhere to be seen when the boy had dragged him away from the motel. But he refuses to comment on it. Two can play at that game. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“I would,” says the boy, “That’s why I asked.” It’s earnest for about a second, and then it clocks what Minho had really meant. “Oh. Ha ha, very funny. You’re all jokes an’ laughter, are ya now?”

“At least I have a sense of humour,” Minho bites back. It sounds weak, even to him, but that’s not the point. Anything is better than thinking about the red rust stains on his fingers. The fact that his sleeves are still coated in the colour, and that his knees are just as dark. Anything to distract him from that soul-eating guilt.

Minho refuses to think about it.

There had been nothing he could do. Despite what the man had implied, there was no way it could have been his fault. 

The boy scowls at him. “You won’t be laughin’ later,” he says, and then he starts moving away from Minho and into the forest. He doesn’t glance behind him, doesn’t even check to see whether Minho is following. It’s simply like he decided that the conversation should be over.

It doesn’t look like he’s following a path, either. As far as Minho can see, the trees are identical on all sides. The sky is as ashy grey as the concrete in the city, and the world is still stained with a thick layer of soot even this far into the outskirts. There are no stars to show direction. There’s nothing except the tangled branches above them and the soft grass beneath their feet.

The boy still hasn’t looked back, and it doesn’t seem like he’s going to. His hands are in his pockets and he’s hunched his back over, leaning forwards and kicking stray leaves out of his path. There’s a decisiveness in his movement that says he must know where he’s heading, however.

Minho doesn’t know if the boy expects him to follow.

He’s not sure that he wants to give the boy the choice.

“Wait up!”

If the boy slows down to allow Minho to catch up, it’s unnoticable. Minho ends up running in order not to lose sight of him through the twisted tree trunks. The ground is so dark that it’s hard to see, and he almost ends up tripping over a few times. The boy pretends not to notice, but there’s a smirk on his face. It’s so damn infuriating, that Minho has half a mind just to turn back around again.

He doesn’t.

For one, he has no idea how to get out of the forest. They’d been running for a while before they’d stopped, and with the addition of the night sky, Minho’s been left completely disoriented. He might have been able to follow the putrid stench of smoke, but what good would that have done? He’d have led himself right back to the motel where there had been an attempt on his life, and something tells him that he wouldn’t get away so easily a second time.

He has all the money in the world, and no idea what to do with it. Contrary toi what the boy might think, Minho isn’t stupid. He knows by now that the reason they’d tried to kill him was because of the credits he had. He’d even  _ shown _ it to that receptionist, and then wondered why she’d looked so shocked. 

Until he has a better idea of how to stay safe, he doesn’t want to risk his life like that again. The taste of ash still coats the back of his throat, reminding him of that same decision every time he takes a breath. 

The second reason is… well, Minho is curious. 

“Why did you save me?”

The boy coughs into his hand, sounding an awful lot like he’d tried to stifle a laugh. “Oh, so now you’re interested in bein’ all friendly again?”

Minho rolls his eyes. “Cut the bullshit,” he says, not quite sure where all this sudden confidence has come from. It feels easy to talk back to the boy, for some reason. He knows by the glint of humour in his eyes that he won’t be offended, instead looking more intrigued by the sudden back-and-forth of their conversation. “There’s no way that you saved me out of the goodness of your heart. Why did you do it?”

“You think that lowly of me?” The boy replies, “What, ya think I only saved you for the credits?”

Minho frowns. That was exactly what he’d thought. “Well, yeah.”

The boy spins around, facing him for the first time since he walked off on his own. There’s a lop-sided grin on his face, making him seem even younger than before, and he’s looking at Minho with a strange kind of hunger in his eyes. “You’re damn right then.”

Was that the response Minho was expecting? He can’t say that it was, but he can’t say that he’s particularly surprised, either. He barely even realises that the corners of his own mouth have quirked up to mirror the boy’s smile. 

“And what if I hadn’t followed you, back then? What would you have done?”

The boy tilts his head. He’s spun back around now, but slowed his pace by just enough that they’re walking side by side. There’s a definite dip in the temperature of the air, and Minho’s arms are covered in goosebumps. The night is certainly cold. “Oh, you’d have followed me, no question ‘bout it.”

“Don’t you need the credits? I’m assuming you don’t have very many, since you refused to show me earlier, but don’t you need them for somewhere to stay? Or do you have your own house? How- how long have you been here?”

“No house,” says the boy, “and you’re a nosy bastard, tha’s for sure. No credits, so don’t go killin’ me just for the sake of it.” He looks Minho up and down, and then snorts, as if just realising something funny. “Not that you’d go killin’ anyone, newbie.”

_ You don’t know that _ , Minho thinks, as bile rises in his throat again.

But it’s another hint as to what might have really happened in the alleyway with that man. The boy has implied that killing would gain him credits. Is that how Minho had gained so many? He’s been the one to crouch there and watch as the life drained out of the body in front of him, but he certainly hadn’t been the one to fire the gun.

The man had still implied it was his fault, and he’d known that Minho hadn’t been the one to actively shoot him. 

_ You put on a good show. _

What could that mean?

“Where are we going?” Minho asks, just to get that sour taste from out of his mouth. Everyone keeps saying he seems new. He is new, so that’s no surprise, but what’s making it so obvious? What could he possibly be missing? “If you don’t have a house.”

“Just came to the city to scam some credits,” the boy says, “Wasn’t expectin’ to get such a catch with you. Saw another idiot walkin’ into the same trap as everyone else, and I decided to do somethin’ about it. That’s the real reason I saved your life, by the way. Don’t go thinkin’ that you’re special or anything.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Minho replies dryly.

“I wasn’t expectin’ to be done so quickly,” the boy admits. For the first time, he looks a little sheepish. “Thought I’d be in this hellhole for at least a week. No one’s comin’ to pick me- us up for a little while yet.”

Somehow, none of that information is surprising. Not even the new fact that the boy isn’t working alone - and that the admittance that he’s being picked up says that he’s not from around here. And yet Minho can’t help but wonder about everything else.

Why would he choose to return to the city?

The way he’d phrased it had made it seem like it was a regular occurrence. That he planned to come back, get all the money he needed, and then repeat. But why would anyone choose to return, when the whole world was out there? 

The city had seemed like it was filled with crime. A man had been murdered, and no one had even batten an eyelid. Even the boy had referred to it as a ‘hellhole’ - certainly he didn’t want to be there any more than Minho did.

There are more things that are beginning to add up, settling at the bottom of Minho’s stomach and making him a little queasier with every step he takes. 

The tattoo on his arm burns.

“Hey,” he says, much more carefully than any time he’s spoken before, “Who are you? What’s up with that city? My arm, there’s a tattoo-”

The boy slows down. Minho doesn’t think that it’s in response to his questions - he’s not _ that  _ self-centered - and soon notices the real reason. There’s the mouth to a cave, mostly hidden behind the trunk of a huge, sprawling oak tree. The grass on the forest floor is worn down, and there’s the distinctive dark remnants of a fire a few metres away. 

“Hey,” says the boy. He leans against the trunk of the tree with such a casual air that this must be where he’s been hiding out. “Who are you? What’s up with all the questions. My arm- we’ve all got the same goddamn tattoo.”

He pulls his sleeve down. Sure enough, there’s the same distinctive marks burnt into his skin. It’s slightly off though, and it’s not until Minho takes a step closer that he realises the boy’s tattoo is stretched out. It’s like the mark was originally done on someone much smaller.

He doesn’t want to think about what that might mean.

“I’m Minho,” he says, eventually, “Where are we?”

The boy smiles back. “I’m Jisung,” he says, “And welcome to Miroh.”


End file.
